The Benefits of Music Education

Our Friends at the Royal Conservatory of Music have published a new brochure outlining the benefits of Music Education.  You can find a pdf version on their website here.

The perennial discussion to cut school music in BC

Updated April 17
It seems that every few years in this province of BC we encounter a movement that wishes to cut the "frills" from education in order to balance the books at local school boards. The latest is the City of Vancouver, you know that town here on the west coast that hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics just a few short years ago. It seems that Vancouverites can'f afford to pay for the "frills" otherwise known as those arts, music and library programs that essentially are what distinguish humans from primates.

But from this morning's Vancouver Sun it looks like Vancouver's difficulties are just the beginning tell-tale signs of the massive underfunding of our provincial education system by our provincial government.

But is the province entirely to blame? Juxtapose this with the costs of administration at VSB, look at the number of employees making more than $150,000 per year.  Actually there are 174 people at VSB making more than $100,000 per year. You can look up this information by going here.

If one looks through the contents of this blog one will find much compelling evidence as to the importance of music education and the arts in general.

But if anyone still needs convincing, here is yet another article that deals with the current crisis created by chronic underfunding by our Provincial Government and a lack of cognitive ability at the VSB.

Anyway, just so we can remind ourselves, here are some reasons why music education is an important component of every child's development.

From http://trainingthemusicalbrain.blogspot.ca/ http://trainingthemusicalbrain.blogspot.ca/2014/04/in-support-of-school-band.html   here is some more scientific rational as to why we need music in our schools.

Benefits of Musical Training on Cognitive Function and Emotional Well-Being

Musical training enhances auditory processing, leading to better verbal skills and increased reading ability:

• Musical training enhances brainstem auditory responses to both speech and music.  Musicians have better encoding of pitch information in speech, which is important for understanding what is being said, as well as the emotional content of speech. (Musacchia et al.,2007; Strait et al., 2009)

• Musicians are better able to filter away background noise, and so can better encode and understand speech in the presence of background noise (Parbery-Clark et al., 2009)

• Adults who had musical training as a child (but did not necessarily continue playing music as an adult) still have better brainstem responses to sound.  This indicates that changes in the brain in response to early musical training are long-lasting.(Skoe and Kraus, 2012)

• Musical training protects against the normal age-related decline in auditory processing.  Older musicians show the same accurate processing of sounds as young people.  This effect of musical training is not limited to professional or life-long-musicians.  Even a few years of musical training during childhood had a protective effect on auditory processing in seniors, even 50 years later.  (Parbery-Clark et al., 2012; White-Schwoch et al., 2013)

• University students with musical training before the age of 12 had better verbal memory  than people with no musical training (Chan et al., 1998)

• Children  with at least 3 years of musical training performed better on vocabulary tests than children with no musical training.There was a positive correlation between duration of musical study and performance on test; in other words, the longer the child had studied music, the more likely she was to do well on the vocabulary test. (Forgeard et al., 2008)

There is much more folks, follow the link here.... to find the rest of this article

The Truth About Piano Lessons

A piano teacher looks at what it takes to succeed in music, why parents should care, and what they can do to help their kids. (This article applies to much more than just the piano...) 

Dear Piano Parents:

You're probably getting mailings right now about fall activities for your kids. The soccer coach wants to know if you're doing travelling team, the Little League coach is scheduling practices, the dance teacher is putting her classes together. And you're wondering about piano lessons for little Johnny or Suzie.

You want to know how much Johnny will be expected to practice. You want to know if Suzie can just "try it out" and see if it's "fun." You need to know what kind of instrument I expect you to have. You want to know if you can come whenever it's convenient, and whether I'll be flexible regarding hockey games, ski Fridays, school dances, ice-skating parties, holidays, and play dates.You want to know if I'm "reasonable" by which I think you mean: Can I change my schedule to suit yours, and am I a stickler for daily practice because Suzie has so much else on her plate and  "things are crazy around here." 

It doesn't usually occur to you to ask what you can do as a parent to help your child with music lessons, but that's something you're going to have to know, too.

I'm in a difficult position as a piano teacher because I'm afraid of telling you the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I'm afraid because the unvarnished truth is not what you are probably going to want to hear if you are like the majority of my piano parents, and when people don't like what they hear, they tend to bail out. You may go to another teacher (which is fine: Everyone deserves the teacher they are most compatible with). But I'm afraid you may bail on music lessons all together.

Because the truth about learning to play the piano scares people. That's the last thing I want to do.

read the article here

Fraser MacPherson Jazz Workshop - Dec. 7

December 7, 1-3pm, a free workshop by legendary jazz drummer Louis Hayes at Cory Weeds’ Cellar Jazz Club (3611 W. Broadway).

* All workshops are free of charge and open to the public. Students wishing to perform in the workshop must complete and submit all required material listed below by November 1, 2013.

Application for Louis Hayes Workshop

The workshop will be held 1:00-3:00pm, Saturday, December 7, 2013, at the Cellar Jazz Club, 3611 W. Broadway, Vancouver.

Individual drummers or bass players are invited to apply. Small groups of 2-5 players, containing bass and drums, are welcome to apply. Applicants must be BC residents aged 25 and under as of Dec. 31, 2013.

The workshop will be in a masterclass format and each person or group is expected to come to the workshop with instruments, rehearsed and prepared to play music for Mr. Hayes. A bass amp, piano, and drum kit will be available on stage. Drummers should bring their own cymbals.

Please send the following information in an email to jburrows@capilanou.ca with “Louis Hayes Application” in the subject line. Application deadline is November 1, 2013.

Incomplete applications will not be considered.

Musicians may be most creative 'when not actually playing instrument'

New research into how and when the muse strikes finds that even fairly mundane activities can feed in to new insights

For a musician, it's an elusive question: where to find your muse? How to unlock your creative voice? Well, putting down the instrument and just tapping the furniture or singing badly in the shower might help.

New research suggests that musicians may be at their most creative when they are not playing their instrument or singing. By studying musicians and asking them when inspiration struck them, researchers found that breakthrough moments often happened when players were humming to themselves or tapping out rhythms on the table or imagining dance moves inspired by the music.

"What we are finding is that even fairly mundane activities can feed in to the discovery of new insight, new knowledge and new means of expressing ideas in all sorts of ways," said John Rink, professor of musical performance studies at Cambridge University. "The potential is infinite."

Rink led a team of researchers who carried out field work at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal College of Music, using interviews, questionnaires, focus groups and filming one-to-one lessons.

They talked to students about when they felt particularly creative or when something new emerged about their understanding of a piece – described by the team as creative episodes.

One horn player was filmed undertaking private practice. Watching it back he identified 34 creative episodes, 23 of which took place when he was not using his instrument – it was when he was humming, tapping on a table, gesturing, whistling and conducting himself. "All of this helps to embed the music in one's mind," said Rink.

He said creativity was important even if you were following a score.

Read the article here.

Is Music the Key to Success?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE trained to be a concert pianist. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was a professional clarinet and saxophone player. The hedge fund billionaire Bruce Kovner is a pianist who took classes at Juilliard.

Enlarge This Image

Anna Parini

¶Multiple studies link music study to academic achievement. But what is it about serious music training that seems to correlate with outsize success in other fields?

¶The connection isn’t a coincidence. I know because I asked. I put the question to top-flight professionals in industries from tech to finance to media, all of whom had serious (if often little-known) past lives as musicians. Almost all made a connection between their music training and their professional achievements.

To read more go to the New York Times Article until Oct.19

The Fraser MacPherson Music Scholarship Fund

The Fraser MacPherson Music Scholarship Fund was initiated to foster the music education of BC’s most promising young jazz instrumentalists. Scholarships are available up to the amount of $2000.00 each and may be awarded to instrumentalists aged 25 and under (as of Dec. 31, 2013) who are residents of British Columbia.

Important dates:

- November 15th, 2013 : Deadline to receive scholarship applications. (Download application below)
- December 30th, 2013: Scholarship Finals (live audition). Location TBA.

Click here to download the Fraser MacPherson Jazz Scholarship application.

Visit the Fraser MacPherson Music Scholarship Website

New Evidence links music education to higher test scores

Does studying music boost students’ overall test scores? Recent research casts doubt on that belief, concluding that the link between music education and good grades appears to reflect the impressive nature of the students who study music, rather than an intrinsic effect of the lessons themselves.

But a new study from Canada suggests music lessons may in fact have wide-ranging intellectual benefits. It finds that, among a group of high-performing high school students, grades were consistently higher for those who continued music classes compared to those who dropped them after two years of compulsory training.

In the journal Behavioural Brain Research, a team led by Leonid Perlovsky of Harvard University describes a study featuring 180 secondary school students in Quebec. Based on their excellence in elementary school, all were selected for an International Baccalaureate program, meaning they were “among the top grade level of their school.” During their first two years of secondary school, music education was compulsory. For the final three years, music courses were optional; the students had their choice of music, drama, or painting/sculpture classes.

The researchers recorded the students’ academic performance in their full range of classes, including science, math, history, and foreign languages. The results for the kids’ final three years of schooling were quite striking.

“Each year,” Perlovsky and his colleagues report, “the mean grades of the students that had chosen a music course in their curriculum were higher than those of the students that had not chosen music as an optional course.”

This proved true nearly across the board. Of the 25 courses rated, there were only two exceptions in which non-music students performed better (in each case marginally).

Perlovsky and his colleagues concede these results do not prove or disprove causality. It is possible that the kids who stay with the music lessons were the smartest and most motivated of this smart, motivated group. But given the kids’ uniformly “high initial achievements,” it seems at least as likely that the music courses provided intellectual and/or emotional benefits, which showed up in the form of higher test scores.

Read the full article here

Top 10 Skills students learn from the arts

You don’t find school reformers talking much about how we need to train more teachers in the arts, given the current obsession with science, math, technology and engineering (STEM), but here’s a list of skills that young people learn from studying the arts. They serve as a reminder that the arts — while important to study for their intrinsic value — also promote skills seen as important in academic and life success. (That’s why some people talk  about changing the current national emphasis on STEM to STEAM.) This was written by Lisa Phillips is an author, blog journalist, arts and leadership educator, speaker and business owner. To learn about Lisa’s book, “The Artistic Edge: 7 Skills Children Need to Succeed in an Increasingly Right Brain World,” click here. This appeared on the ARTSblog, a program of Americans for the Arts.

Read the article here

Why musical genius comes easier to early starters

Good news for pushy parents. If you want your child to excel musically, you now have better justification for starting their lessons early. New evidence comes from brain scans of 36 highly skilled musicians, split equally between those who started lessons before and after the age of 7, but who had done a similar amount of training and practice.

MRI scans revealed that the white matterin the corpus callosum – the brain region that links the two hemispheres – had moreextensive wiring and connectivity in the early starters. The wiring of the late starters was not much different from that of non-musician control participants. This makes sense as the corpus callosum aids speed and synchronisation in tasks involving both hands, such as playing musical instruments.

"I think we've provided real evidence for something that musicians and teachers have suspected for a long time, that early training can produce long-lasting effects on performance and the brain," says Christopher Steele of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, a member of the team, which is led by Virginia Penhune of Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

Sweet spot

Steele says that younger-trained musicians may have an advantage because their training coincides with a key period of brain development . At age 7 or 8, the corpus callosum is more receptive than ever to the alterations in connectivity necessary to meet the demands of learning an instrument.

However, he stresses that these connectivity adaptations are no guarantee of musical genius. "What we're showing is that early starters have some specific skills and accompanying differences in the brain, but these things don't necessarily make them better musicians," he says. "Musical performance is about skill, but it is also about communication, enthusiasm, style and many other things we don't measure. So while starting early may help you express your genius, it won't make you a genius," he says.

Nor should older aspiring musicians despair. "They should absolutely not give up. It is never too late to learn a skill," says Steele.

Why musical genius comes easier to early starters - life - 15 January 2013 - New Scientist

The New Economic Reality for Classical Musicians

There is much strife these days in the classical orchestral world between professional orchestra management and the musicians, especially in the country of our neighbours to the south, the United States. Many of the same conditions and market forces are just as prevalent on this side of the 49th parallel.

In a commentary discussing the appalling situation with the Minnesota and St. Paul Chamber Orchestras where orchestra management is on the verge of locking out its musicians in a contract dispute Eric Nilsson points out some basic observation that I think can resonate through the arts community.  You can read the article I am quoting from here.  The article is well worth a read.  Here are a couple of points from the article, and some points for further discussion.

The first reality is this: However much it takes to become a top-flight classical musician, the performer can expect to earn only what the market is able and willing to pay.

What's the "market"? It's people with money, be it $10 or $10 million, who would buy concert tickets or make donations to current operations and, one would hope, to an endowment for the long haul.

Today, far more "people with money" are inspired to give to charities meeting human needs than are willing to pay top-flight classical music performers year after year. In other words, the problem here is not parsimony. The problem is that unless and until society at large assigns higher value to the extraordinary work of classical music performers, musicians cannot expect to be paid what they deserve.

He goes on further...

The first reality points to a second: to increase significantly society's value perception of live, world-class classical music, greater exposure and appreciation (in that order) would need to occur in our schools, starting at kindergarten and continuing through college. The exposure would have to be via the core curriculum, not simply by casual, extracurricular band, choral, orchestra and individual instruction.

People surrounded by classical music can vouch for its intrinsic value and thus, are willing to pay. However, to persuade people without intense exposure to become huge fans and significant financial supporters of orchestras is a tall order. And the payback I'm talking about would be a long process — 20 years if we were to institute today a "core curriculum," K-through-college approach. We would then have to wait 20 years longer before the first crop of people with such exposure would reach an age when they would be capable of making major contributions to the Minnesota Orchestra and the SPCO. (I know what I'm talking about here: In my own case, even after intense exposure to classical music all my life, I didn't start giving substantially until I was well past 40.)

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Is Music the engine behind language acquisition?

Contrary to the prevailing theories that music and language are  cognitively separate or that music is a byproduct of language, theorists at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) advocate that music underlies the ability to acquire language.

“Spoken language is a special type of music,” said Anthony Brandt, co-author of a theory paper published online this month in the journal Frontiers in Cognitive Auditory Neuroscience. “Language is typically viewed as fundamental to human intelligence, and music is often treated as being dependent on or derived from language. But from a developmental perspective, we argue that music comes first and language arises from music.”

Brandt, associate professor of composition and theory at the Shepherd School, co-authored the paper with Shepherd School graduate student Molly Gebrian and L. Robert Slevc, UMCP assistant professor of psychology and director of the Language and Music Cognition Lab.

“Infants listen first to sounds of language and only later to its meaning,” Brandt said. He noted that newborns’ extensive abilities in different aspects of speech perception depend on the discrimination of the sounds of language – “the most musical aspects of speech.”

The paper cites various studies that show what the newborn brain is capable of, such as the ability to distinguish the phonemes, or basic distinctive units of speech sound, and such attributes as pitch, rhythm and timbre.

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The Role of the Community Music School in audience building

What is the role of the local Community Music School with presenting concerts? Do we do this because we want to educate audiences in our communities about various forms of music? Do we do this to give gigs to local musicians and help keep the Arts Alive? Do we have our own concert facilities in-house or are we renting space? Do for-profit music schools also engage in these same sorts of concerts? Why or Why not?

There has been an interesting discussion online for the past few weeks about Jazz music and its shrinking audience. It began with this Huffington Post article (which is well worth a read if you are remotely involved with arts programming, not just jazz, lots of great background info in the article which I will not repost here) which explores the notion that creating viable audiences for jazz and other forms of art music is a simple matter of education. There has been a belief for the past few years that somehow if we could just educate the kids properly we would find ourselves back in the era of John Coltrane and local jazz clubs with live musicians on every street corner. Jazz pianist Kurt Ellenberger makes the case in his article that life is not that simple; all the educational forces in the world will not bring back jazz cafes on every block.
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Music Monday shares key message

The language that unites every being on the planet is being cut out of many schools in an effort to save cash
by Bramwel Tovey

Every year, the Coalition for Music Education calls out to Canadians to participate in Music Monday, the first Monday of May, to celebrate and demonstrate their commitment to music education in the lives of young people and communities.

It is the world's largest single event dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of music education. This year, hundreds of thou-sands of students across Canada will unite in song today for the seventh annual nationwide Music Monday celebration.

In Vancouver, there will be a midday concert at Robson Square Plaza. Half a dozen school groups (from elementary to secondary, from drum circles to jazz choirs and concert bands) will be performing. I am looking forward to conducting a mass performance of the Music Monday song (Tomorrow is Coming) by Juno award-winning artist Luke Doucet.

Music Monday exists to celebrate the galvanizing power of music and demonstrate how that power is rooted in school music programs.

Schools participating in Music Monday are among the fortunate - most of them have music programs. However, many young students in Canada are not this fortunate; music classes, resources and specialist teachers have faced serious cuts or elimination throughout the country. In our own province, many school districts have reacted to budget difficulties by restricting access to music in their schools.

Music Monday is an opportunity to raise awareness about the value and importance of music education. The arts are not "frill" subjects.

Rather, they are at the core of a well-rounded education. At the VSO we believe an education without a significant musical component is no education at all.

Music is a language that links every human being on the planet. It needs little or no translation. In a school district like Vancouver, where dozens of languages are spoken by our widely diverse community, music is the only language common to everyone. Our society needs to be producing students who are creative as well as self-disciplined, who can work in teams as well as on their own. Learning music teaches these skills. We need all our children to have the opportunity to enjoy music in all its forms.

And remember: If a student holds a musical instrument, then he or she can't hold a knife, or a joint, or a needle or a crack pipe - or a gun.

If students are in a choir or a band or an orchestra, they are communicating through the universal art of music at the heart of our community.

Anyone can join the national movement for music education by visiting www.musicmakesus.ca or on Facebook www.facebook.com/music-makesus.ca.

Maestro Bramwell Tovey is the music director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Making Music Together Increases Kids’ Empathy

Music education produces myriad benefits, strengthening kids’ abilities inreading, math, and verbal intelligence. New British research suggests it may also teach something less tangible, but arguably just as important:

The ability to empathize.

In a year-long program focused on group music-making, 8- to 11-year old children became markedly more compassionate, according to a just-published study from the University of Cambridge. The finding suggests kids who make music together aren’t just having fun: they’re absorbing a key component of emotional intelligence.

The research team, led by Tal-Chen Rabinowitchof the university’s Centre for Music and Science, studied 52 girls and boys. The kids, chosen from four British schools, were randomly assigned to either a music group, or one of two control groups.

The kids in the music group joined weekly hour-long sessions where they played specially designed musical games. Some of the games encouraged the young musicians to get “as rhythmically coordinated as possible,” while others promoted the idea of “shared intentionality” — say, by having kids compose music together.

In the simplest game, “Mirror-Match,” each child repeated a short musical phrase after it was played by a peer. This kind of imitation is believed to “promote the sharing of mental states” — a dynamic found in a 2010 study of 4-year-olds.

Children in the first control group also met for one hour each week, and played games designed to cultivate empathy through imitation and shared intentions, but their activities involved words and stories rather than music. The kids in the second control group didn’t take part in any special activities.

Read the article here

Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra

This is an hour long program written by and featuring UK comedian Bill Bailey that’s perhaps best described as what if the cast of Monty Python wrote The Young Lutheran’s Guide to the Orchestra? "

Bill Bailey joins forces with Anne Dudley and the BBC Concert Orchestra for an evening of his music and comedy. Using both contemporary and classical references, Bill Bailey explains, in his unique and hilarious way, the nuances of how the orchestra works and the lesser-known influences of various classical composers. Also included are some of his own original works, rearranged and performed by himself and the orchestra under the guidance of musical maestro Anne Dudley." - BBC


 

Bernstien: The Unanswered Question

From the original Harvard University Lecture Series.
1973

Jazz Workshops in the 21st Century, the New Mentorship Process

Every time I see a teaching artist talk about music I learn something new. Every time I look at a contemporary book or blog post explaining creative music work I find something I’ve never seen before. Not that I always agree. Yes, agreement about practicing scales and chords and patterns and rhythms is easy. But it’s in the fundamental conception of the creative process and how to address it that things get interesting. That’s where new jazz workshops around the globe are taking the lead in passing on this tradition in a way that used to be covered by working mentorships and touring.

The conversation in these workshops is often about lineage and tradition, about learning vocabulary and repertoire, how to practice, what to practice. And talk usually returns to the most elusive and perennial theme in jazz and creative music: ‘finding your voice.’ You could say the central question here is: How do I teach you to be you?

Young musicians are coming up better educated and more informed, with more opportunities for exposure to music than ever before. More professional artists are involved in workshopping, and you could say meeting artists in that context is slowly replacing the old mentorship model of touring, recording, and graduating to being a bandleader. Like not or not, the industry no longer provides those kinds of jobs in music. Musicians are learning another way.

I recently ran into Dave Liebman on an airplane and he confirmed this. He’s one of the most engaged artist educators out there. Without hesitation he said that the young musicians he encounters are coming up exposed to all kinds of music and modes of playing. And they have the materials to practice. There are more jazz programs at the high school and university level than there ever were, and the programs I’ve seen have evolved into a cross between a conservatory approach, a creative seminar, and some serious training about getting gigs and doing them well enough to make a career path.

A lot this is provided by independent, non curricular workshops around the globe. I have been fortunate to be involved with the workshop at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff, Alberta, Canada for the past 10 years. It’s a three week workshop that takes place in May/June at an arts campus situated in the Canadian Rockies. I stepped into the directorship in the shoes of previous directors Kenny Werner, Hugh Fraser, Steve Coleman, Dave Holland, Oscar Peterson, and Phil Nimmons.

Read the article on Dave Douglas's blog at Greetleaf music

Can Music Make Your Child Smarter?

Most parents can agree that kids just get music, instinctively and instantly. We recognize it the first moment we successfully calm a hysterical newborn with a ballad or watch a toddler, who can barely stand, boogie to the rhythm of a song. But what else is going on in their little brains when the baby dance-a-thon in the kitchen is going strong?

 A lot, it turns out. Recent studies have shown that interacting with music – as opposed to just listening to it – has the power to improve your rugrats’ abilities to understand language, do math and much more.

 Recently, E. Glenn Schellenberg from the University of Toronto has shown that music lessons can boost a child’s IQ, while Krista L. Hyde from McGill University in Montreal has demonstrated how lessons can change a brain’s actual structure – even suggesting they could help children with developmental disorders. More and more, music appears to be an all-in-one workout machine in the weight room of your kid’s brain.

 Now, for some, this music-as-brain-superfood thing seems like déjà vu. Remember the Mozart effect, the ’90s fad that led a generation of parents to believe that playing classical music for their children could turn them into geniuses?

Read the Article at Today's Parent

Key year for music schools

When the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra's School of Music opened its doors in the downtown core this summer, many thought it would rattle the music education cage in the metropolitan area.

 And yes, the VSO School of Music's enrolment level has surpassed its expectations of having 300 students registered by June 2012, something it managed to do in less than six months. What it didn't know was who it would draw the most attention from: children and seniors.

 Of the 300 students registered at the school since it opened (total capacity is 1,500), 100 are enrolled in the early childhood program. "We knew there was capacity for classical music instruction in Vancouver," VSO School of Music executive director Shaun Taylor said. "We weren't expecting the early childhood program to take off as fast as it did. "For the last couple of years in downtown Vancouver, you've seen more strollers and there's an elementary school approved to be built in the International Village area. According to Statistics Canada, where we're located in the downtown core [on Seymour between Robson and Smithe] is the area that has seen the most growth and is anticipated to have the most residential growth."
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